


Love Caffeinated

by pinkPenguin23



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-13 08:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10509858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkPenguin23/pseuds/pinkPenguin23
Summary: Clarke and Lexa have a chance encounter in their small town.  Coffee, intrigue, heartbreak, and ....murder??? We'll see.





	1. Chapter 1

“Just ignore her,” I mouth to Raven while our supervisor Nia prattles on about steaming milk for cappuccinos. It’s a busy morning at Starbucks, the high-pitched hiss of the espresso machines punctuating the air as steadily as the store’s upbeat, jazzy playlist. I pull a pair of shots for a caramel macchiato and nod while she drawls on.

“Remember to aerate the milk for a longer period. Cappuccinos are lighter than lattes.” She turns her head side-to-side, her expectant expression flashing between Raven and me.

“You got it,” Raven says. She swings toward the cooler, filling the cup in her hand to the top with ice, and snaps on the lid. She swishes it once with her wrist and announces in a sing-song voice. “Quad grande iced americano, no room!”

A man with tufts of white hair behind each of his ears and a knit hat pulled over his head looks up from his newspaper and smiles. He gets out of his chair and ambles toward us. “Thank you, love,” he says, and sits back down.

“Sure thing, Ellis,” Raven says.

Nia clicks her tongue. “Don’t forget to smile.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, but we’ve already moved on. Octavia, who’s working the cash register this morning, is piling cups beside each of our work stations. I glance at my cue, her jagged scrawl denoting various orders in thick Sharpie marker. Dirty chai for Marley. Caramel frappuccino with extra caramel drizzle for Winston. London Fog for Rachel. 

I step around Nia and hand the caramel macchiato to a woman with a bright red peacoat. “Maggie, did you tell your son I saw him on TV the other night?”

“Oh, he was so pleased.” She sticks a plastic stopper into the lid’s opening, her cheeks red with cold. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but when I told him, he said, ‘the cute blonde girl said that?’” She lets out a laugh. “Anyway. They’re having a great season.”

Maggie’s son Issac is the star quarterback at West High. There’s only one high school in our tiny Wisconsin town. 

“I’m sure you’re very proud of him,” I say.

“Behind you,” Raven says, and she pushes an iced coffee across the bar. “Caramel iced coffee with coconut milk!”

“I shouldn’t keep you,” Maggie says with a wave of her hand. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay, Maggie. You stay warm out there, okay?” I flash a smile and turn back to the espresso machine. 

“Very well done, Clarke,” Nia says. 

“Oh.” I’d forgotten she was there. “Thank you.”

Raven rolls her eyes. Her ponytail whips her shoulder when she turns toward the blenders. She begins shoveling ice into one of them for a pair of vanilla bean frappuccinos. Nia taps her pencil against the the clipboard in her hand. “Keep up the good work, you two. I’ll be back in a bit.”

She shuffles past us, behind Octavia and into the back room. 

“She acts like we’re new at this,” Raven says. She slaps a lid onto the blender and turns toward me. “Is she going on vacation sometime soon?”

“We can hope.” 

“Sorry to disappoint you.” Octavia pipes up from the cash register. “I overheard her bragging about how she’s saving up her vacation time to take a cruise this summer.” There’s no line for the first time all morning. She reaches for the cup she stashed under the register this morning and stabs the cubes of ice with a straw. “Can you put two shots in here? I’m going to crash soon.” She pulls off the lid and hands me the cup.

“Sure. You want white mocha, or are you finally getting sick of it?”

“Of course not. How does anyone get sick of white mocha?” She asks. “Two pumps.”

“Seriously though. I’d make more money selling lemonade on my front lawn,” Raven says. “And I wouldn’t get harassed 24/7 by someone who is literally useless.” Her expression cracks into a smile. “Did you hear her? Remember to aerate the milk for a longer period. Like, no shit, lady, I learned that my second week on bar.” 

“I was trying my best to tune her out,” I admit. 

Octavia snorts. “That’s pretty much my strategy too. See no evil. Hear no evil.”

“Maybe when spring rolls around, you can open up that lemonade stand, Raven.” The thick white mocha sauce melts into the espresso. I toss a few ice cubes into the cup and shake it a couple times. “And then we can stop by and be ridiculously picky like our customers. Two slices of lemon, please—you gave me three last time, I think, and it didn’t taste the same. Uh, can I have a sprinkle of sugar along the rim? Excuse me, is this real lemon juice? No ice, please, or maybe just a couple cubes.”

Octavia tosses her head back and laughs. 

“I don’t know why Nia loves you so much.” Raven shakes a canister of whipped cream and aims the nozzle over the frappuccinos. She tops each one with a generous swirl. “She’s so far up your ass—I don’t even get it.”

“Uh. Maybe because she’s the best barista we have, and she remembers every customer’s name—oh, and she doesn’t start snapping at everybody when the line gets too long.” Octavia shrugs. “You know, just to name a few reasons.”

“Whatever,” Raven says.

I hand Octavia her drink. “Thanks.” She smirks at Raven and returns to the register. 

“Nia lectured me yesterday about leaving pastries in the oven too long,” I say. 

“It’s fine, Clarke,” Raven says. “It’s not like I’m jealous.” 

“I didn’t say you were.” I pull a pen from my apron pocket and grab an unused grande cup from the stack closest to me. I’ve fashioned the Starbucks’ logo, a siren with long wavy hair and a pointed crown, a million different careers since I started working here. I’ve drawn her with a palette of paints, an Air Force uniform, a microphone, a briefcase, a piece of chalk, to name a few things. It passes the time when the store is slow. 

Raven leans over my shoulder. “Turn her into a pirate.”

“Okay.”

“But first. Breve bombs.” She pours a splash of half-and-half into two separate short cups and pulls a pair of shots for each of them. I watch her hold a spoon under each stream of espresso, the dribble of liquid slipping down the sides of the spoons and into the cups. It’s a tradition for us to treat ourselves after the morning rush.

“We survived another crazy Monday.” Raven hands me one of the cups. “Cheers.” 

*

Around eleven in the morning, Nia lets me take my lunch. I untie my apron strings and pull the neck strap over my head. The back of the store smells like stale coffee and dish detergent. I toss my apron over an empty chair and rummage through my bag for the peanut butter sandwich I slapped together at 5AM this morning. My hands are shaking as I pull open the Ziploc bag and tug the crusts off the sandwich. I’ve had way too much coffee. 

“Clarke.” Nia is standing paces away from me, leaning one shoulder against a shelf stocked with chai concentrate and mocha sauce. “I know you’re on lunch, and I don’t want to keep you. But I’m sure you know by now that Roger’s leaving.” 

“Yes.” I turn toward her. Roger was one of the three leads who worked mornings. He was moving east to care for his aging mother as soon as he got transferred to another Starbucks location. 

“I’m thinking you might be an ideal candidate to take over for him. You’re a natural leader.” She smiles. “Anyway, think it over. We can talk more in a couple days.” She claps her hands together and walks away. I perch on the desk beside the computer and reach for my phone. I’m tempted to text my mom something snarky like Oh hey mom guess what might get a promotion and make 1.50 more per hour I’ll keep you posted. She’s a doctor. A ridiculously successful one too. She works at a hospital about thirty minutes from here and rarely comes home, catching short naps in one of the break rooms or a hotel between her marathon shifts. When I told her I wanted to go to art school instead of medical school, she was devastated. Clarke! Have you ever looked at your biology grades? You’d make a great doctor. I didn’t want her guilt-tripping me for the next four years after graduating, so I told her I’d pay my own way. That’s why I’m here now, working morning shifts at Starbucks, crashing on Octavia’s couch, and taking night classes at the community college in town. I’m working toward my AA. 

When my thirty minutes is up, I retie my apron and slip my phone into one of the front pockets. Raven is brewing a fresh pot of Pike Place, Starbucks’ most popular roast, and chatting with Dave, one of the regulars. “Oh, I don’t know, Dave, I pretty much think humans are stupid for thinking they could live in this kind of climate. I mean, you walk outside for two seconds, and your nose just about falls off.”

“Don’t listen to her,” I say. “She grew up in Miami.”

“No idea why my parents decided to ship us out to this Godforsaken part of the country.” She lets out a laugh. “No job is worth living in the arctic.”

Dave chuckled. He’d taken the lid off his coffee cup, and it was soggy and bent in places. By this time, he was usually on his third or fourth refill. “I think I’d feel the same way about a place with hurricanes and UV that gives you skin cancer.”

“There’s UV here too, Dave,” Raven says. She turns to me. “So Nia talked to you, right? About the job?”

“Briefly,” I say.

“You should take it. I’d rather have you bossing me around than Octavia.”

“I won’t be bossing anyone around. What’s going on with you two?”

“Ask her.” Raven twists the cap off a new jug of 2% milk and gestures behind me.

“Here you go.” Octavia hands me a cup for Olivia, a semi-regular customer who drops in on afternoons when she’s out running errands with her kids. Her order is always the same. Grande peppermint mocha, extra whip and chocolate shavings. 

“Thanks.”

“Not right now,” Raven hisses behind me. 

“I wasn’t going to,” I whisper back when another customer captures Octavia’s attention. “You really think I’m going to ask with you standing right there? You know, you could make things easy and just tell me yourself.”

“Can’t do that,” she says curtly. “I’m going on lunch, okay?”

“Okay.”

“See you in a bit, Dave,” she says, and ducks into the back room. I prepare Olivia’s mocha and slide it across the bar toward her. “Thank you, my goodness, it’s so cold outside. I had to run to the store and couldn’t bear to do it without something warm in my hand. We’re out of milk and eggs.”

“Park as close as you can to the doors, okay?” I say, and she smiles.

“You’re a real sweetheart, Clarke, I’ll make sure to do that.” She leaves with her gaggle of five young children, all of them holding each other’s hands as they totter across the icy parking lot. I reach under the bar and grab one of the rags floating in a bucket of sanitizer water. The counters are spotted with milk splashes and drips of caramel sauce. 

It’s so quiet. I love this time of day, when the regulars are absorbed in their computers and newspapers and books, and the quiet serenity so often associated with coffee shops settles over the store. There’s the tap-tapping of fingertips on keyboards, almost like falling rain, and the occasional swish of a page turning. Dave taps his shoe lightly against the tile floor. Nia switched the music about an hour ago, and Frank Sinatra’s smooth voice croons softly overhead. Octavia is reading a book behind the register. 

“We kicked their asses!” A girl with a peppering of freckles across her cheeks and wiry red hair bursts through the front door. She throws her arm around the girl standing next to her, and they cheer in unison. Six or seven girls crowd into the store behind them. They’re all wearing baggy jerseys with the image of a fox snapping a hockey stick in half stamped across the front. 

“Hi, welcome to Starbucks!” I say cheerily. I can see a pickup parked in front of the door, the bed of it loaded with giant duffle bags and hockey sticks. I smile wide, but part of me wishes they’d gone across town to a different Starbucks. 

Other customers are peering over their computers and newspapers to look at the crew of young women who’ve just commandeered the store. They get in line, one after another in front of Octavia’s cash register, their loud voices bouncing off one another, their laughter rising and falling and jolting the hushed atmosphere.

“Is Clarke your first name?”

I look up from the espresso machine to see a girl staring intently at me. Her dark hair is pulled back into a drooping, sweaty ponytail. Black mascara is smudged at the corners of her eyes. 

“Yes, actually.” I absently touch my name tag and pick up the first cup Octavia set beside my station. Three ristretto shots over ice, and a splash of cream. “Why? Is that weird?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I like it.”

“Okay.” I pause, remembering Darcy’s needling comments about customer service. “So you guys are on a hockey team or something?”

“Yeah.” She watches me while I work. There’s the letter C ironed across her heart, and the number seven stamped on each of the sleeves. “We had a friendly this afternoon. Nothing serious.”

“What do you play?”

“Center.”

“Is that what the C’s for?” I ask.

“Oh.” She glances down at her chest. “No. I’m the team captain.”

“Right.” I smile again. I look at her for a little too long. “Cool.”

“You don’t watch hockey?”

“Not really,” I tell her. For the first time in my life, I wish I did.

“Fair enough.”

“Hey, Cap.” One of her teammates is calling her toward a corner of the store, where they’re pushing together two tables. “Get over here. You haven’t decided who gets the game puck yet.”

“That’s mine,” she tells me, pointing to the cup in my hand. I forgot I was holding it. “Oh. Yeah, okay.” I reach toward the stack of lids on my left and grab one. I secure it over the top, glimpsing for a split-second the name scribbled in Octavia’s swift handwriting. Lexa.

“Here you go,” I hand it to her. 

“Thanks.” Her fingers are cold, but when she retracts her arm and turns away from me, the places on my skin where we touched feel warm.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

 

“Oh. Hey, guys.”

When I get to Octavia’s apartment after class, her brother Bellamy and his friend Monty are sprawled across the couch, a beer in each of their hands and an old episode of Criminal Minds playing on the television.

“Hey, Clarke.” Bellamy waves. “Octavia’s in the kitchen.”

“Okay.” I duck in front of the television, wading through a sea of beer cans and crumpled McDonald’s bags to the kitchen. Octavia is sitting in a folding chair, one foot tucked under her, a laptop open on the dining room table and a glass of hot tea beside it. I sit in the chair across from her. “So your brother’s, uh, staying here tonight?”

She looks up at me and shrugs. “I don’t know—I guess?”

“I’m pretty sure they’re both too drunk to get themselves anywhere.”

“Yeah.” She reaches for her tea and takes a sip. “You’re probably right.”

“You want me to sleep on the floor?”

“I don’t know, Clarke—I told you I didn’t mind you staying here. I didn’t promise that my couch would be available every single night.”

“Okay.” I slide my backpack off my shoulder. Bellamy and Monty are shouting at the television. 

“Shit, man! She’s totally going to kill that guy.”

“I’m all for it,” Bellamy says. “He’s a real bastard.” 

Octavia smiles to herself, her eyes focused on the screen. She spends most of her evenings reading high school students’ English papers. She works as a tutor in addition to being a barista. 

“Are you upset with me?” I ask her.

“What? No, of course not.”

“Because I pay you $200 every month to live here, and I buy my own groceries—”

“I know.” She tilts the screen down toward the keyboard and gazes at me over it. “I’m not upset, I just—you act a little bit entitled sometimes. Like okay, yeah, you usually sleep on the couch. But Bellamy’s family, and he’s going through some shit. If he wants to stay for a couple nights, he can.”

“A couple nights?”

“Clarke. Yes.”

I want to tell her that I have at least two hours of homework ahead of me tonight and another eight-hour shift starting at four tomorrow morning, but I don’t. Octavia’s incredibly close to her brother, and no matter what kind of trouble the other one gets into, they have each other’s backs. I get it. 

And I know better than to ask about what he’s going through. If Octavia wanted to tell me, she would have done so already. 

I unzip my backpack and pull out my math textbook. “I’m sorry he’s having a rough time.”

“Me too.”

“So what’s going on with you and Raven?” 

“She told you to ask me, right?” Octavia rolls her eyes. “I didn’t do anything. Why should I have to be the one to catch you up on everything?”

The three of us went to the same high school. It’s funny, the way the same dynamics play out again and again no matter how much time has passed. 

“You don’t have to.”

“She’s just being weird about whatever’s going on between Kane and me.”

“Why?”

“How should I know?” She closes her laptop. “They dated, like, literally years ago. When was that—our sophomore year of high school? I mean, please.”

“Do you even like Kane?” I get out of my chair and head for the kitchen. It’s almost midnight, but I usually get hungry around this time. I search the refrigerator for the jar of strawberry preserves I bought last week. There it is, hiding behind a jug of milk. I find the peanut butter in the cupboard. “I asked you about your guys’ first date, and you’re like ‘oh, it was fine.’ Who says that about someone they really like? ‘It was fine.’”

“Yeah. I don’t know.” She props her elbows on the table. “He’s kind of boring, to be honest.”

“Maybe that’s why Raven’s upset—aren’t they friends now? Like, they’re one of those couples that actually managed the ‘let’s be friends’ thing everyone tries to do when they break up.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” She shrugs. “You should ask her. Sometime when I’m not standing right there. She might tell you.”

I slather two slices of bread with peanut butter and drop a glob of jelly in the middle of one of the slices. “Yeah.”

“If you want to crash in my room tonight, I don’t care.” She gets out of her chair and carries her cup of tea to the sink. She pours the last of it down the drain and puts the cup in the top rack of the dishwasher. “I work early tomorrow, so I’ll be out in about fifteen minutes. If you want to come in later, make sure you’re quiet, okay?”

“Okay.” I smile at her. “Thanks.”

“Yeah. Apparently I’m a jerk who doesn’t share the blankets. That’s what every guys who has ever spent the night says in the morning—just so you know,” she says. “Night, Clarke.”

*

The next morning, Octavia and I carpool to work. I’m sitting in the passenger seat with my head tipped back, my fingers gathering my hair into a ponytail. Bellamy and Monty were up for hours and had finally fallen asleep by the time my alarm went off. “Shut it off,” Octavia whisper-hissed to me. “They need their sleep.” So I did what she said and got dressed as quietly as I could. I collected my tube of mascara, lip balm, and a spare hair-tie off the bathroom counter and dropped them into my purse. We slipped past Bellamy and Monty, who were passed out on separate ends of the couch, and locked the door behind us.

“Sorry everything was so hectic this morning,” she says. We stop at a red light, and both of us reach for our mascara and unfold the visors over our heads. “I wish I could tell you—it’s not my secret though.”

“It’s okay, Octavia, I get it.” I coat my lashes a deep chocolate brown. “I know it can’t be easy having me see your shit all the time.”

“Better you than Raven. She’s got a bigger mouth than you.”

When we get to Starbucks, it’s dark inside the store. Nia put me in charge of opening the store most mornings and gave me a set of keys. We unlock the doors and begin setting up for the morning. Octavia unwraps pastries for the case, and I brew the first batch of coffee. Raven arrives a few minutes late. She waves one arm over her head and disappears into the back room. “Be back in a second!”

“Are you going to tell Nia that she’s, like, never on time?”

“It’ll show up on her time card.” I prep the espresso machines for their first customers. The smell of the coffee fills my nose.

“I guess.”

“Praise God, you guys, it’s Nia’s day off!” Raven bounds behind the counter toward us, her apron untied, the strings swinging when she twirls in a circle. “I was not going to be able to handle her shit this morning, you know?”

“So does this mean we’re speaking again?” Octavia is sitting on the counter, a slice of pumpkin bread she wrote off as “damaged” on the inventory sheet in her hand. She pinches off a piece and pops it into her mouth. 

“Oh.” Raven flicks her eyes toward Octavia and shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“I mean, I didn’t do anything wrong, so if you feel like getting over this, I’m all for it.”

“Ha! Yeah, okay.” Raven tugs her apron strings tight and ties them in a bow behind her. “Is that what Kane’s going to say the next time you guys hang out? Or is he going to be like ‘oh, hey, it’s not really cool that you hooked up with Monty the other night.’”

“What?” Octavia’s gaze narrows.

Raven shrugs and turns away from both of us. Octavia catches my eyes. Nothing happened, she mouths.

“I’m going to open the store,” I tell them. “It’s almost 4:30.”

The first few customers trickle through the doors. Ralph wants his tall blonde roast and butter croissant, like he does every morning. Alex wants her caramel frappuccino. It doesn’t matter how many degrees-below-zero it is outside. She always orders a frozen drink with extra ice. She peels the paper off her straw. “Thanks, ladies, see you tomorrow.”

The morning rush goes by quickly. Octavia and Raven don’t speak to each other, which is fine with me. It’s easier than fielding their bickering jabs and juggling customers at the same time. I think back over the last couple weeks. I’ve only seen Monty at Octavia’s when Bellamy’s also there. I wonder where Raven got the idea that they’re seeing each other.

“Hey, Ray.” Finn, Raven’s boyfriend since they were juniors in high school, sits on one of the stools along the bar and props his elbows on the counter. “You on your lunch break anytime soon?”

“Clarke?” Raven addresses me. She pours a cup of coffee and slides it across the bar toward her boyfriend.

“I’m not a lead yet,” I tell her. “When do you want to take your break?”

“Now, if possible.” 

“Go ahead,” I say. We’re at the tail-end of the morning rush. “Hey, Finn.”

“Hey.” He smiles at me over his coffee cup. He’s got a knit stocking cap pulled down over his ears, his stringy dark hair sticking out from under it. “How’s living with Octavia?”

“It’s good,” I tell him.

“Has your mom called the cops yet?”

I smile. “No. Every once in a while, I shoot her a text that I’m alive.” 

“If you ever need to crash at my place, you’re welcome to, you know that, right?”

“Really?” I pull a pair of shots for a white mocha and turn toward him. “That’s really nice of you.”

“No problem,” he says with a grin. 

Raven returns, a hoodie pulled over her uniform and her purse hanging from her shoulder. “You ready, babe?”

“Yeah. See you in a bit, Clarke,” Finn says, and they leave together.

“There’s nothing going on between Monty and me,” Octavia says the second we’re alone. “I swear—where the hell did she get that?”

“I don’t know.” I pull an empty cup off a stack of ventis and reach for the Sharpie in my pocket. “It’s not like I’m judging you—did you and Kane even decide you were exclusive?”

“No.” She twirls her ponytail in her fingers. “I just—I kind of think she likes pretending that everyone’s in love with her, and whenever someone shows an interest in one of us, she can’t handle it. So she’s planting all these doubts in Kane’s mind—whatever. I don’t even like him that much.”

“She’s got Finn, Octavia, I don’t think she wants Kane back.”

“Me either. But I think she wants him to want her, you know?”

“Maybe.” I’m sketching a set of test tubes for the Starbucks siren today. Octavia has a bit of a point—whenever one of us has a date Friday night, Raven always looks a bit put out.

“Hey—Clarke, right? The girl with the last name for a first name.”

When I look up, Lexa is standing in front of me, her always-intense expression watching me over the espresso machine. I didn’t hear her come in.

“Hi.” I feel my face flushing. “Yeah.”

“Cool.” She walks toward the cash register and orders the same drink she ordered yesterday. Octavia hands me the cup, a knowing smile on her lips, and busies herself with the morning’s tip money. 

“Where’s your crew?” I ask.

Lexa’s dark hair falls around her shoulders. She’s wearing a sweater and jeans, her winter coat folded over her arm. “I mean—I’m not always playing hockey. I have a life.”

I laugh. “Right, sure.”

“You like working here?”

“It’s okay.” I pour a splash of cream over the shots and press a lid over the cup. “Here.”

“Thanks.” She lingers for a moment, her fingers tapping the sides of the cup. “You work Thursdays?”

“Yeah.” I remember my haphazard makeup application in the car earlier and hope I look okay. “I don’t work Sundays and Wednesdays.”

She nods. The bell hanging from the front door tinkles as a young women enters the store, a scarf wound around her neck and her body braced for the cold. She’s beautiful, with silky dark hair and rosy cheeks. “Jeez, Lex—did you have to drag me out of the house today? It’s freezing.” 

“I know, Costia, but—never mind,” Lexa says, reaching out her hand. “Come here. Wow, you feel like ice. I’m glad you decided to get out of the car.”

“I’m not.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to sit down. Order me whatever, okay?” She leans toward Lexa, kisses her temple, and walks away. 

“Okay.” Lexa pauses. Something flashes across her expression. Worry? Exasperation? Sadness? Her gaze flicks toward the menu. Costia is wriggling out of her coat and hanging it on the back of a chair in the farthest corner of the store. She sits down, one knee tucked to her chest, and watches out the store’s front window.

“Can I get a peppermint mocha, please?” Lexa asks Octavia. 

“You bet,” she says. 

I steam the milk and pull the shots for it while she pays.

“You okay?” I ask when she approaches again, but she doesn’t respond. I grab the whipped cream canister and top the mocha with a thick white swirl. “Here.” I snap a lid onto the cup and slide it into a paper sleeve. “You two have a good day, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” she says, distracted, and joins Costia at their table.

“So she’s got a girlfriend, huh?” Octavia whispers to me. “That sucks.”

“Shut up,” I say. “When Raven comes back, do you mind if I take my lunch?”

“Go for it. If I were you, I wouldn’t want to watch them either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know you were probably hoping Costia wouldn't figure in to the story but.....be patient. Haha


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

 

On Thursday morning, Octavia and I work our way through an uneventful morning opening the store and dealing with the morning rush. It’s Raven’s day off, and Jasper’s working alongside me on bar. It’s almost eleven by the time the traffic begins slowing down. 

“Hey, Clarke, check this out.” He holds up a cold cup half-full of a thick liquid the color of coffee with a generous amount of cream. “It tastes like an espresso apple pie—I’m totally serious.”

“That sounds awful,” I tell him. “There’s a reason that’s not on the menu.”

“Try it, please?” He thrusts the cup at me. 

I can smell it before it reaches my lips, the aroma a strange mixture of coffee, apple juice, and a sickening sweetness. “Oh, God, Jasper.”

“It’s good, right?”

“It tastes like you took a flavored coffee from the grocery store and added a bucket of sugar cubes.” I laughed. “I’ve go to be honest. It’s not your best.”

“The pumpkin vanilla bean frappe was better, huh?”

“Way better.”

“Clarke.” Octavia whispers my name. When I turn toward her, she’s gesturing awkwardly with her eyebrows toward the front of the store. 

I glance toward the door, and Lexa lifts her arm and waves to me. “Hey, Clarke. Long time, no see, right?”

“I guess so, yeah.” I absently wipe my hands on my apron. “Did you stop by yesterday? I had the day off.”

“I know. You told me, remember?” 

“Right.” I smile. She remembers my schedule. “Where’s, uh, your girlfriend?” I pretend like I don’t remember her name. Would it be weird to remember her name?

“Working.”

“What does she do?”

“She’s a night stocker at that giant department store across town—it’s kind of weird actually. She stays up all night and then sleeps most of the day.” Lexa slips out of her coat and drapes it over one arm. “Hey. Octavia, right?”

“Yup.”

“Can I have—”

“A triple ristretto over ice, with a splash of cream.” I’m leaning over Octavia’s shoulder. “Right?”

“Yeah.” Lexa smiles. “Good memory.”

“We get paid for having good memories.” I stop myself. Was that the wrong thing to say?

“Here.” Octavia hands me a cup without any writing on it. “Since you already know the order, show off.”

I pour a half-scoop of ice into the cup as Jasper hands his latest concoction over the bar. “Hey, give this a sniff, will you? Tell me what you think.”

Lexa raises one eyebrow. “What is it?”

“Take a guess.”

She leans toward the cup and sniffs it. “Huh.”

“You can say it’s gross.” I elbow Jasper playfully in the side. “He’s a little too creative for his own good sometimes.”

“It smells like Christmas,” she says.

Jasper’s eyes light up. “In a good way, right?”

“Not—in a bad way,” Lexa says, and I burst out laughing.

“It’s called the espresso apple pie half-latte.” He grins. “Two shots. Steamed apple juice. Steamed half and half. Cinnamon dolce syrup, and a drizzle of caramel sauce. Brilliant, right?”

Octavia pipes up from the register. “That sounds disgusting.”

“I get it,” Lexa says. “I mean, don’t a lot of people like a cup of coffee with their dessert?”

“Yes!” Jasper says.

“So then maybe it would appeal to people on a liquid diet, or something.” I flash a bemused smile and hand Lexa her drink.

“Thank you.”

“Hey, Clarke, you want to take your lunch? It’s slow right now.” Octavia addresses me without looking up from the register. We decided last night while I was working through a set of math problems and she was grading a paper about Great Expectations that if Lexa showed up without Costia, Octavia would make a point of offering I go on lunch—so it wouldn’t seem weird or obvious. “So you get a chance to really talk to her, you know?” Octavia smiled at me over her laptop. “If that’s what you want.”

Octavia didn’t think she could pull off sounding casual if she looked me in the face, and I made it very clear that if she made the whole thing sound rehearsed, I might die of embarrassment.

“Yeah, okay.” I untie my apron and slip behind Octavia to the back room. I pull the apron over my head and put on my winter coat. When I return to the lobby with my lunch, Lexa is perched on one of the stools at the bar. 

“You want to take a walk?” I ask her. 

She looks a little bit surprised, and then she nods. “Sure.” 

*

“So what do you do?” I ask. We’re walking down the sidewalk outside Starbucks. There’s an icy breeze this morning, and a crisp layer of snow over the grass on either side of the pavement. Chunks of salt and ice scatter the sidewalk. “I mean, besides playing hockey.”

“Right now I work in a bakery.” She points over the Wal-Mart on our right. “It’s a few blocks that way. I work the evening shifts. It’s pretty easy. The shop is way busier in the morning.”

“Sounds like this place.” I’m tugging the crusts off my sandwich and rolling them up into spirals. I eat the crusts, but I have to eat them separately. “Do you like it?”

“No. Does anyone like giving donuts to families with eight screaming kids and shaggy-haired guys with the munchies?” She rolls her eyes. 

“Does Costia like her job?” Warmth rushes into my face. I’m supposed to pretend like I don’t know her name.

Lexa gives me a bit of a funny look, her eyes watching me. “Nope.”

“Sorry. I heard you say her name—that’s weird, I know.” I search my brain for something that will make it seem more normal. “When you’re a barista, you’re supposed to remember everyone’s name. I probably have half the town memorized by now.”

She nods. “It’s fine. Are you really dissecting your sandwich like that?”

I look down and laugh. “I’m not dissecting it.”

“I couldn’t do that and walk at the same time.” She swings her arms at her sides. “Why’d you suggest this anyway? It’s freezing.”

“I get tired of being stuck in there all day. Even if it’s so cold that my nose turns numb and my ears fall off, it’s better than staying inside, you know?”

“I guess.” Her boots scrape the sidewalk. “It’s nicer than the bakery where I work. Everything smells like burnt oil, and I swear no one has mopped the floors in, like, five years.”

“That’s pretty gross.”

“When Costia visits, she buys one of those bottled juices, you know, like a Minute Maid, or whatever, and that’s it. She won’t eat anything that isn’t pre-packaged because she thinks she’ll catch some horrible germ and die.” Lexa laughs. “I can’t blame her, really.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little bit rude? Like, you go visit your girlfriend where she works and refuse to eat any of the things she sells?” I pause. I shouldn’t have said that. 

“I don’t eat them either.” Lexa turns up the collar of her coat. The wind is picking up, and the sun is stuck behind the same thick cloud cover where it was hiding this morning. “Sometimes I walk to the grocery store down the block for lunch.”

I nod and watch the tops of my shoes. Spots of milk stain the canvas fabric. Sometimes if I have the energy, I’ll scrub them after a work shift—especially if I’m working with Jasper, because he always spills on me during the morning rush—but lately, I’ve gotten lazy.

“What?”

“What, what?” I ask. 

“It’s like you have a problem with my girlfriend.”

“No.” I shrug. “Why would I?”

“I don’t know.”

“She doesn’t seem very nice, to be honest, but that’s none of my business.” I finish the sandwich and wad the plastic wrap into a ball. I push it into my pocket and blow warm air into my hands.

“Yeah.” Lexa nods. “It is none of your business.”

“Pretend I didn’t say anything then.”

“I will.”

“Fine.” 

She runs a hand through her hair and folds her arms. The tips of her ears are red with cold. “You sound like my parents.”

“Why?”

“My foster parents. They’re always harping on me about Costia. 'Isn’t she a little old for you, Lex? Don’t you think you could find someone who shares your interests? Do you really think she loves you?'”

“So they don’t like her either.”

She laughs reluctantly. “Being compared to my parents is not a compliment.”

“Does she tell you she loves you?”

“Yeah,” Lexa says. “God, you’re kind of like—super nosy, you know that?”

“You didn’t have to answer the question.”

“I guess.” She shakes the cup in her hand, cubes of melting ice clacking against each other.

“Well if she says she loves you and she means it, I shouldn’t give you a hard time.” I lean into her lightly, my elbow bumping hers. “Sorry.”

“Yeah.” Lexa shrugs her shoulders and focuses her gaze on the strip of sidewalk in front of us. “You know what? I should go. I—I’m supposed to meet someone, for something.”

“O—kay.”

“Yeah.” We’re circling back to the parking lot. Lexa steps off the sidewalk onto the grass. “I’ll see you later, Clarke, okay?”

“Sure, yeah,” I say, and she climbs into the same pickup she was driving when we first met and drives away.

*

When I get back inside, Bellamy has arrived, along with Monty, and they’re crowding the stools along the bar, shouting at Octavia. Not at her, per se, but in her general direction and loud enough that everyone in the store can hear them. She holds her finger to her lips. “You guys. Seriously.”

“Can you believe that?!” Bellamy is red in the face, his dark, unkept hair sticking out around his ears. “I mean—”

“It’s such bull shit.” Monty swings the frappuccino in his hand when he speaks. “Like. Total. BS.”

“Everything okay, guys?” I ask. 

“I just got fired,” Bellamy says. “For a drug violation. I’m never going to get a job again.”

“We were hoping they’d—I don’t know…effing listen to you when you said you had nothing to do with it?”

“Yeah. Clarke. Get this. That asshole Pike stored his stash of weed in my locker—without my permission, by the way, he just saw me use the combination or something—and my supervisor found it on some random search—what are the odds?”

“Wow.” I wriggle out of my coat. “That really sucks.”

“Yeah. Can you keep it down though please?” Octavia gives them each a stern look. “People come here to relax and read and stuff.”

“Sorry. Damn, sis, can I crash with you awhile longer?” Bellamy asks. “I’m month-to-month on my apartment right now, and I’m not going to be able to pay next month.”

“You mean you want to move in?” Octavia glances at me. 

“Just a for a little while. And not until next week.”

She hesitates. “Yeah. Sure.” 

“You’re the best.” He grabs his cup off the counter. “We should go—Mont, come on.”

“Yeah, man.” He leaps off his stool. “Here, catch!” He tosses Bellamy his car keys, and they grabs their coats and hats off the backs of their chairs. 

“I hope you’re applying for jobs!” Octavia shouts, but all they do is wave and fly out the front door, their coats half on. I don’t bring up Bellamy moving in with Octavia, or the less-than-perfect meeting with Lexa.

“I’m going to clock in and wash the dishes in the back,” I say. “If you need me, just shout, okay?”

“Okay,” Octavia says. She doesn’t bring it up either, which is just as well. I let the door swing shut behind me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know things don't look great for Clarke right now, but they'll get better soon!


End file.
